


The Shipwreck Game

by Graf_Edric



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Guess who, High School, Romance, south florida, surfer girl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 12:11:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5163377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graf_Edric/pseuds/Graf_Edric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary Gannon knows what she wants, and it's not that goofy foreign kid who seems to have taken an annoying interest in her. However, she formulates a plan to use him to get a chance at her true quarry. That's when everything gets confusing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Opportunity Taken

The first day of high school presents many opportunities. For Mary Gannon, the most important one was to be the chance to reinvent herself as something other than a total nobody, on the verge of hopeless geekdom and nowhere near popular. If she couldn’t amend her weird personality, the very least she could do was change her appearance and make a concerted effort to be perceived as cooler than she actually was. Over the summer she had let her sun-bleached blonde hair grow out past her shoulders, gotten a nice dark tan on the beach at the end of her street, and tried her best to take care of her fingernails so they’d be at least somewhat feminine. She traded her glasses in for contacts and cultivated an interest in the latest fashion trends. She wanted to look the part of a refined and self-assured young woman, even if on the inside she felt like a nervous wreck.

First hour – Earth Science. The classroom was a typical South Florida school room with concrete block walls under layer after layer of semi-gloss paint, the latest of which was a pale, sickly green; dingy linoleum flooring, disheveled vertical blinds, and gaudily colored plastic and metal desk chairs with attached fake pine laminate desktops. Mary glanced around and saw a familiar face smiling up at her from the back. She darted over and sat down next to Taylor Shannon, a tall, fair skinned, almost redheaded brunette she’d shared a couple classes with in middle school. She was overjoyed to see this girl, even though she’d barely spoken two words to her the entire time she had known her up until now. The two of them whispered nervously as the classroom filled up with strangers. A tall, fat kid with a blond crew cut took the seat in front of Mary, almost blocking her view of the teacher, who was trying to get everyone’s attention so he could begin roll call.

The teacher was a wiry, ruddy-complected older guy with salt-and pepper hair by the name of Mr. Allen. Mary would soon learn he was known to be a surfer and a notorious pothead who drove an old, rusted-out bright blue Bentley. But for now, she listened half-heartedly as he introduced himself and explained that as he called each of their names, if anyone had a nickname they preferred, they were to call it back so he could make note of it. Mary knew she could disregard that aside. She just had to be paying close enough attention not to miss her name being called, causing immediate embarrassment and social failure.

As each name rang out in Mr. Allen’s slightly twangy voice, Mary tried to connect the faces with the names, and to sort of take inventory of whom she would be dealing with in this class. The fat kid’s name was David Petersen. There was a scary, gangster-looking chick in the back left corner named Kayla Bennett. She was wearing oversized guys’ clothes, clunky black basketball shoes and a wallet chain. Kelly Travers looked to be a popular, cheerleader type, with white daisy dukes so short they looked more like diapers.

Mary grew nervous as her name approached.

“Mary Gannon?”

“Here,” She tried not to sound too loud or enthusiastic, but also not meek or timid at the same time. She felt she had accomplished that much. Mr. Allen paused after her name, smiling at her for a moment. She felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘ _Get on with it!’_ she thought, irritated at him for drawing undue attention to her.

The next name on the list was Kristian Schaefer. The student who answered with a laid back, “Yeah,” was a tall, golden-haired boy whose chiseled features were a cross between a Greek god and a Ken doll. Mary felt an instant attraction well up inside her. Now _that_ would make this class interesting.

She was so caught up in staring at the soft curls at the nape of Kristian Schaefer’s suntanned neck that she nearly missed the next name, and she would have, had it not been so unusual.

Mr. Allen paused again before he said it, probably to ascertain that he could pronounce it correctly, and even so, he didn’t sound too sure of himself when he haltingly called out, “Ha… Heinrich Haisler?”

A skinny, hopelessly dopey-looking dark-haired kid to Mary’s right lifted a lanky hand, but before he could reply, someone else amongst the class called out, “Heini!”

Mary, along with the rest of the class, sat in stunned silence for about half a second before bursting into uncontrollable laughter. The boy who had been the butt of the unfortunate announcement glanced around, bewildered, from behind a pair of roundish, gold, wire-rimmed glasses. Mary wondered if he had any earthly idea what everyone had found so amusing. She decided to clue him in.

She leaned toward him over the armrest of her desk. He turned to face her. The fluorescent lights reflecting off his glasses completely obscured his eyes. All she could see was a pair of straight, dark eyebrows just above the lenses. He had a rather high forehead and a receding chin. His ears were too low, too far back on his head, and they stuck out like teacup handles. “Hey. Heini means your _butt_ , dude. You might wanna consider going by something else.” Mary informed him sardonically.

Another round of laughter rang out from the class.

The boy nodded vacantly, his mouth slightly agape. She could see two big, square front teeth peeking out. Mary imagined the sickening feeling he must have been experiencing, but the realization that she’d just gotten the whole class to laugh out loud overpowered any empathy she had for him.

                “How ‘bout Henry?” Mary suggested, feeling the full attention of her audience upon her.

            The boy nodded again. “Okay,” he replied breathlessly.

Scattered giggles sounded among the other students.

Mr. Allen had been watching the whole fiasco in silence, waiting for the laughter to die down. “So we’re going with Henry, then?” He finally spoke up.

The boy nodded again.

“Well, alright. Henry it is.”

Mr. Allen carried on with roll call, and Mary basked in the sublime feeling of having made a positive impression on her fellow classmates on the first day of ninth grade.

Well, _most_ of her classmates. She stole a sly glimpse to her right. Heinrich Haisler sat frozen in his seat, both hands flat on the desktop, staring blankly at the fake wood as if he could somehow see his feet through it. His shoulders slumped and he pressed his lips into a thin line, sighing heavily.

Mary didn’t enjoy the idea of having ruined someone else’s day, but this kid had been doomed to utter social failure before she’d ever opened her mouth. _Heinrich? Seriously?_  Did his parents hate his guts? There was no hope for someone like that.

            Her next class was English, and she had to find her way clear to the other side of the campus, a harrowing journey to complete in the five minutes before the tardy bell rang. She slipped in just before the bell and sat in the very back of the classroom. She hadn’t noticed anyone familiar and there was no sign of Kristian Schaefer.

            Students continued to trickle in even after the bell, and just as Mrs. Harding was preparing to begin roll call, the door creaked open and in slipped Heinrich Haisler, looking hesitant and befuddled. He gingerly picked his way through the occupied desks, taking the one directly to Mary’s right, just as he had in the previous class. Nobody said much, but everyone turned to look at him as he passed. Even his clothes were odd. His whole outfit looked to have been transported right out of 1982. Mary wondered if maybe his parents were desperately poor and had bought all of his clothing at Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

            This time, when Mrs. Harding called his name, he confidently replied, “Henry,” and then promptly turned to smile a disarmingly goofy, squinting, tight-lipped grin at the side of Mary’s head. She glanced sideways at him as if he’d sprouted extra limbs. Along with his absurd appearance, he sounded like he had a cold and he seemed to suffer from some sort of speech impediment. Mary prayed silently that he hadn’t decided to latch onto her simply because she’d spoken to him in first hour. Didn’t he understand that she was making fun of him? Could anyone be _that_ stupid?

            She tried to seem interested in what the teacher was saying and avoided looking at him for the rest of the class. Out of the corner of her eye, she could tell he kept glancing over at her. It made her angry. The last thing she needed right now was to be associated in any way with a kid whose nickname was a colloquial term for someone’s backside.

            When the bell rang, she grabbed her books and hastily made her way to the door, hoping her next class would be Heini-free.

            It didn’t matter anyway. She already knew one of her good friends from last year, Allie Rose, shared the class with her. They had compared schedules over the summer and were happy to find that they shared two classes, Social Studies and Algebra I, as well as lunch.

            It was pretty unlikely that any guy, regardless of his social cluelessness, would try to get between two giggling teenaged girls.

            Allie caught up to her in the hallway on the way to Social Studies, surprising her by tugging on her book bag strap.

            “Hey girl!” She greeted Mary excitedly. Allie was dirty-blonde, pale, and slightly pudgy. Her lips were always bright red even without lipstick.

            “What’s up?” Mary responded with her standard response. She knew it was cliché but it was always the first thing that popped out of her mouth whenever she saw someone she knew.

            “Oh my God, you’re not going to believe this,” Allie blurted out, grasping Mary’s shoulder. “Greg Randall is in my first hour.”

            “No way. There’s some total hottie in my first hour, too. Kristian something. He’s freaking ungodly.”

            “Kristian Schaefer?” Allie inquired.

            “Yes! Do you know him?”

            “He’s in my second hour. I knew you’d like him the second I saw him. He’s totally your type.”

            The two girls settled into desks alongside one another. They watched as the other students filed in.

            “Dude, I have to tell you – it’s the most hilarious thing ever,” Mary said quietly.

            Allie put down the compact mirror she was puckering her lips at and turned to look at her friend expectantly.

            “Okay, I mean, you kinda had to be there but you know how teachers, when they call attendance for the first time, they want you to call out your nickname if you have one?”

            Allie nodded.

            “Well this one kid, I swear to God, you know what somebody called out as his nickname?”

            “What?”

            Just as Mary was about to continue, the subject of her story came meandering into the room. He looked directly at her but there were no available seats nearby so he chose one several aisles over.

            Mary reached out and grabbed her friend’s arm, pulling her close. “Oh my God! Dude, that’s him!” she hissed gleefully. “That’s the kid I’m talking about! His name is Heinrich or some shit and when the teacher called it out, somebody shouted, ‘ _Heini!’_ ”

            “Are you fucking serious?”

            “Yes. I swear to God, dude.”

            Allie snorted with laughter.

            “The whole classroom busted out laughing.”

            “That’s some crazy shit right there,” Allie mused.

            “I hate to interrupt your conversation, girls, but I’d like to start class now,” a voice suddenly interjected, catching Mary and her friend by surprise. They both looked up to see the teacher, a patently plain, noticeably young woman by the name of Mrs. Byers. She had dull, frizzy brown shoulder-length hair and wore an ankle-length, dark-colored paisley dress.

            “Sorry,” Mary replied sheepishly. The teacher flashed a phony smile and strode away.

            “Psshht!” Allie scoffed. As soon as Mrs. Byers was out of earshot, she declared, “I’m not apologizing to _her.”_

            Mary giggled.  Allie was never ashamed to speak her mind.

            “I wonder what’ll happen this time,” Allie muttered.

            “I told him to say his nickname was Henry,” Mary admitted.

            “Aw, why’d ya do that? I wanted to hear somebody rage his goofy ass.”

            “I’m sure you’ll get plenty of chances. I mean, we have the whole year to enjoy Heini’s antics.”

            When Mrs. Byers called out his name, Mary and Allie whispered, “Heini! Heini!” and snickered amongst themselves. Mary heard a few others laughing quietly as well.

            At lunch, Mary and Allie met up with another friend from middle school, Jessica Reynolds. Tall and big boned but relatively thin, Jessica always wore her naturally curly brown hair in a tight ponytail at the crown of her head.

            The three amigos found a nice, cozy spot to eat in the far corner of the main building, near the science wing. They settled down under a fichus tree that was growing out of a small, square patch of grass formed by four hallways.

            As her friends wolfed down their slices of cafeteria pepperoni pizza, Mary fished a Tupperware of home-made trail mix out of her book bag.

            “What’s that?” Jessica inquired around a mouthful of cheese and crust.

            “Trail mix. I made it myself so it has all the stuff I like in it.”

            “You and your weird-ass eating habits! One of these days I’m gonna take you to Outback and buy you a big porterhouse and you’re gonna _like_ it, chickee!” Allie interjected.

            Ugh, I’ll puke. I have literally _no_ interest in gnawing on a slab of dead cow. But thanks for the offer,” Mary smiled sarcastically, narrowing her eyes.

            Allie held up three fingers, palm facing inward. “Read between the lines, beotch.” She sneered jokingly at Mary.

            Mary just flipped her off. “I tell it like it is,” She declared.

            The next class was Algebra I. She made her way to one of the dozen or so portable classrooms located behind the school for this most dreaded of classes. Mary detested any kind of math, but at least Allie would be suffering at her side this year. That made it all the more tolerable. As it turned out, Kristian Schaefer was also in the class. Algebra might wind up being less than hideous this year after all.

            Beginning Pottery was the class Mary had been most looking forward to. She’d always been naturally artistic and creative but had never been allowed to experiment much with the medium of clay. She couldn’t wait to try out the pottery wheel.

            The classroom was in the very heart of the school, located in one of the original buildings dating from the 1920’s. The floors were made of terrazzo, scrubbed dull from years of having been tread on by thousands of highschoolers and dusty with clay residue. Students sat on barstools at long, waist-high wooden tables. The tables were coated by a layer of ground-in unbaked clay. The whole room was full of its earthy, damp odor. Mary already loved it.

            She casually walked up to one of the tables and sat down. She didn’t have to worry about making a certain kind of impression in any art class – she was confident that she would wind up impressing most of the other students eventually, and hopefully the teacher too.

            A tall, tan girl with sun-bleached bronze hair sat to her left, and to her right, another girl plopped down, this one with pale skin, long brown pigtails, and thick glasses. She was dressed in a frock that looked like it was homemade. The class was almost all female, as were many of the art classes she’d taken in the past. There were a few exceptions, however.

            Across from her sat a boy of average build who looked to be perhaps a year or two older than she was, with shiny, coffee-colored hair in a short bowl-cut and strikingly bright blue eyes. He wasn’t exactly handsome though, on account of his prominent, very triangular nose. Whenever he tilted his head back even slightly, she could see straight up his nostrils. He also had a small mouth, thin lips, and crooked, crowded teeth. She wasn’t paying attention when the teacher called his name, but she immediately took notice when he answered back, “Call me Alfie,” in a sharply resonant, almost baritone voice that didn’t seem to go with his thoroughly ordinary appearance at all. She found herself glancing at him repeatedly after that, and had to make herself stop lest he notice and think she was weird.

            Their first project was going to be a slab-constructed container of some kind. The students were allowed to create whatever they pleased, so long as it was of the proper construction. Mary lost herself in playing with the clay and was surprised to hear the bell ring after what seemed to be only a few minutes. She stowed the unfinished lump of clay, quickly rinsed her hands, grabbed her belongings, and headed for the side entrance of the school, where she knew her grandmother’s red Mazda sedan would be one of the first cars in line.

            Mary had been living with her grandmother for almost ten years now. Her parents had divorced when she was four, and her mother had moved back home. Shortly thereafter, she had decided to join the Air Force. She was often stationed overseas and rather than upset Mary’s life by moving her from place to place, she just allowed her to remain with her grandparents. It wasn’t a bad thing. Although she did miss her mother, Mary had always gotten along wonderfully with her grandparents, especially her grandmother, with whom she had quite a bit in common.

            Mimi and Papa, as she called her grandmother and grandfather, owned an old, white, doublewide trailer home in a venerable and remarkably upscale trailer park located directly on the Atlantic Ocean just north of Delray Beach. The fact that she lived in a trailer park was the bane of Mary’s middle school existence, but in actuality it wasn’t so bad. The park was quaint but exceedingly well-kept, with neat rows of gleaming white trailers separated by narrow streets lined with gnarled sea grape shrubs and old coconut palms bending out to shade the sun-bleached asphalt. The best part was that right at the end of Mary’s street lay a stretch of private beach that appeared to have come straight out of a travel magazine.

            Most of the residents were snowbirds and nearly all of them were retirees who rarely took advantage of the veritable paradise outside their back doors. Mary would often play alone for hours on the beach, swimming, surfing, snorkeling on the reefs that lay just a few yards offshore, and acting out various imaginary storylines without fear of being caught by anyone her own age. The only time she ever had a playmate was when she invited one of her friends over, which she almost never did out of fear they’d tease her for being “trailer trash”.

            As soon as she got into the house, she grabbed a can of soda out of the fridge and quickly changed into her sun-faded bikini and flip flops before making her way down to the beach. She took one look at the clean sets of waves coming in and ran back to retrieve her surfboard, an ancient longboard her grandparents had bought for her mother back in the 1970’s. The glass was almost orange with age and the decades of sand and salt had left the finish dull and cracked in some places, but Mary didn’t care. She never tired of riding the waves. It was almost like having a carnival ride in your backyard, and there was something incredibly cathartic about going out there and getting her ass kicked by the ocean.

            She stayed out until the evening sun behind the Australian pines and coconut palms cast shadows so long they stretched all the way to the waterline. Her limbs felt limp and achy and it looked like she had road rash all over her stomach from lying on the gritty, sand-caked wax that covered the top of the board.

            As she was showering off, her grandmother appeared through the gate to the beach entrance.

            “Just in time for dinner,” she smiled. The two headed back together.

            After a shower and over a white Corning ware plate of pan-fried fish, steamed broccoli, and microwaved mac-and-cheese, Mary recounted her first day of high school to her grandparents. She didn’t go into excessive detail, but she did mention Kristian Schaefer and told them how much she’d loved her pottery class.

            “Your mother used to do pottery. We still have some of her pieces around here somewhere,” her grandfather mentioned.

            “That was ceramics. I guess it’s kind of the same thing,” Mimi added. “Do you actually _make_ the …stuff? Or do you just scrape the edges off and paint it?”

            “No; we actually make it,” Mary explained with a smile.

            “Well, I can’t wait to see what you’ll bring home this year,” Mimi replied. After a moment, she spoke up again. “Oh, I meant to ask you earlier, Mary -- do you know the Meiers, who live over on Cordova?”

            Mary shook her head.

            “She doesn’t care about these old farts around here, Betty,” Papa interjected wryly.

            “Well _anyway,”_ Mimi continued, eyeing her husband with good-natured dubiousness, “I ran into Ilse today at the post office and she told me that her grandson was going to be staying here for a while. He’s right around your age and supposedly he’s even going to Atlantic High School.”

            Mary blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Is he hot?”

            “I don’t know about _that,”_ laughed Mimi.

            “Is his name Kristian Schaefer?”

            “You never know,” Mimi smiled. “Maybe you can teach him how to surf.”

            “I’ll teach him some other stuff too if he’s a hottie.”

            _“Mary!_ You’re _scandalous!”_

            Mary found it much easier to sleep that night than she had the night before. It wasn’t just the physical exhaustion brought on by surfing for so long; she was also much more at ease about facing her second day in high school than she had been about her first. Everything seemed to be going as well as could be expected so far. A slight twinge of anxiety still plagued her, but it wasn’t enough to win out over the aching tiredness that made her eyelids as heavy as her worn out limbs.

            When her alarm went off at 7:00 the next morning, she was a little sore and still very tired but forced herself to overcome the strong desire to remain in bed. She had to make sure she didn’t look all haggardly, because she figured that second impressions were probably almost as important as first impressions. She dragged herself out of bed and got into the shower.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2 - The Mind of a Boy**

Things seemed to be going as well as could be expected by the end of the first week of school. She wasn’t exactly relishing it, but then again she’d never really been a great student. Sitting still for the better part of six hours a day, having to focus her attention on various topics in which she had no interest whatsoever, was not her cup of tea. Mary often found herself gazing out the window at the gleaming South Florida sun and dreaming of the beach and the ocean. She found it extraordinarily difficult not to draw pictures all over the temptingly blank notebook paper rather than take notes. In the past, she’d nearly failed a couple of times on account of her un-scholarly tendencies, but she was determined this time to obtain at least mediocre marks, so as not to bring any negative attention upon herself.

After the first week was over, she was massively relieved to be facing two entire days of no alarm clock, no trying to pretend to be socially acceptable, no teachers, no idiotic rules, and no structure whatsoever.

She woke up just past noon on Saturday. After lounging in bed for a bit, she wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of cereal. The sky was overcast but not threatening, so she put on her bikini, grabbed a towel, and headed over to the beach to check out the waves.

The waves turned out to be lousy. She sat down on a massive, ever-present driftwood log lying near the top of the beach where the sea oats and sea grapes covered the dunes and dug her toes into the damp sand. There wasn’t even any Sargasso weed floating about in which to search for crabs and shrimp and tiny fishes. She kept a small saltwater aquarium in her bedroom where she collected and studied the creatures before letting them go and catching new ones. In the past, she’d found seahorses, porcupine puffer fish, and even a baby barracuda or two.

Today, she decided to attempt to dig a hideout beneath the log, just to see if it could be done. She got down on her hands and knees and began scraping fistfuls of sand out one after another like a dog digging under a fence. Gradually, the sun began to burn through the thin, high clouds, beating down on her bare back. Mary was so engrossed in her project that she didn’t notice it at all until the sun was suddenly blocked out by a shadow that fell over her from behind.

Startled, she looked back over her shoulder to see an apparently unfamiliar silhouette. It was that of a boy, tallish and thin, wearing a teeshirt and long pants rather than a pair of swim trunks or board shorts as she would normally have expected on the beach. The sun was so bright behind him at first that she couldn’t make out his face or the colors of the clothing he was wearing at all. She was instantly mortified, though, at what he’d caught her doing.

“Hi,” the shadowy figure said hesitantly. It sounded …weird. Like there was too much force behind the “H” or something.

She put a hand up to shade her eyes, and at the same time, the figure stepped out of the direct line of the sun. He was not immediately identifiable to her out of his usual setting, but the roundish, gold glasses gave it away.

“What’re YOU doing here?” Mary demanded, still a little embarrassed to have been caught digging in the dirt like a dog but more worried now that he might go and tell everyone at school about it.

Heinrich Haisler just shrugged in response to her inquiry. His arms hung limply at his sides.

“Are you like, stalking me or something?”

He made a face, curling his upper lip as if to infer that she wasn’t making sense.

“I’m serious. There’s never any kids on this beach. How did _you_ get here?” Just as the words left her mouth, she remembered her grandmother telling her about the neighbors whose grandson was staying with them. _“…Supposedly he’s even going to Atlantic High School…”_ What luck. The one kid her age who ever moved into the park turns out to be Heinrich Haisler.

“Mine, er – my opa and oma are… livin’ hea. I stay viz dem.” he stammered in a nearly unintelligible foreign accent of some sort, which, she realized, had been the reason she had suspected at first that he was suffering from a speech impediment. His voice would have been dorky even without the accent, though.

“Dude, where are you _from?_ _France?”_ She demanded, wrinkling her nose.

“No! München! Germany!” He retorted indignantly.

“You’re a kraut?” Mary teased.

“You’re a yank.” He mumbled in reply, passive-aggressively shoveling sand back into the partially finished hideout with one pale, skinny bare foot.

“ _Hey!_ Get outta here!” She objected loudly.

Heinrich stubbornly stood his ground, crossing his arms over his chest and cocking his head back and to one side. His eyes were black slits behind the lenses of his glasses. He easily could have passed as Asian.

 _“Go away.”_ Mary commanded angrily. She picked up a handful of sand and tossed it at his legs. His only response was to scuff more sand back into the hole she had dug. “Dude. If you don’t _stop_ I’m gonna _kick_ your _ass._ ”

She was pretty sure she could take him. He was several inches taller, but she was certain she was tougher.

He smiled, apparently unmoved, and stifled a snicker. “Vat you makin’, a house?”

“I’m digging a grave for when I kill your dumb ass if you don’t get the hell away from me.”

He laughed, a goofy kind of laugh that went perfectly with his appearance and his voice.

Just then, the edge of the hole where he stood caved in, sending him sliding down into it on such a large chunk of sand that Mary’s hideout was almost completely filled in. More sand poured in where he grabbed at the side, trying to keep himself upright.

            “You _fucking_ _idiot!”_ Mary shrieked. She was furious.

            Heinrich Haisler was frantically struggling to free himself from the sandy pit when Mary deftly sprang up and scooped out two big clumps of sand, intending to hurl them full force into his face. He managed to free himself from the pit at that instant and took off, half crawling at first and kicking sand up everywhere, attempting to evade her attack. As she closed in, he screamed bloody murder, laughing hysterically all the while. She flung the sand in her fists and it struck him in the back, leaving two big smudges on his t-shirt. He looked over his shoulder at her and tripped over a low spot, which allowed her to catch up. Mary reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt, mustering all of her strength in an attempt to fling him off his feet. He was stronger and heavier than he looked, but she still succeeded. He stumbled sideways and fell face down and she pounced on his back, pummeling him with her fists as he howled, still half-laughing.

“Ach! I’m eatin’ da sand!” He cried breathlessly, choking and spitting.

 _“Good,”_ she retorted, still straddling his back. He looked even more pathetic now that she had him pinned like that. She reached down, plucked the glasses off his face and then got up, bounding backwards a few steps and holding them out tauntingly. “I’m gonna break ‘em!” She pretended to snap them in half.

“No! Don’ do it; I don’ have no ader von hea!” He pleaded, reaching out to her as he tried to regain a standing position. He knelt on one knee, panting.

_“So?”_

“No, _please,_ don’ break it. I -- I vill help to fix da house fah you,” He continued piteously.

 _“Help?_ You’re gonna fix it yourself, dipshit. You’re the one who ruined it. You can have these back when it’s like it was before you fucked it all up.”

“Okay,” he begrudgingly sighed, already trudging back to the site of the demolished hideout.

She sat smugly on the driftwood as he dutifully began restoring her project to its former state. She examined his glasses, blew most of the sand off, and then put them on her face. “Damn, you’re blind,” she commented.

He glanced up, smirking. Without the glasses, his eyes looked bigger, but they were still squinty for a white guy; almost no eyelids at all. She was slightly surprised that they were blue, because she’d just assumed they were brown for some reason.

Mary pinched some dry sand off the sun-bleached surface of the wood and sprinkled it on top of his head. There was already a ton of sand throughout his fine, dark brown hair but he shook his head anyway, as if it would have some significant effect. She waited a moment and sprinkled more.

In response, he silently reached up and placed a small chunk on her knee before promptly returning to his task.

“Quit it, slave boy,” she chided, giving him a light kick to the upper arm.

After a few more minutes, he sat back on his heels. “Okay, here is you house back again,” he proclaimed. “So how you like it?”

“Much better than when you destroyed it.” She shot back, but she punctuated her jab with a grin.

He smiled back. He had a very kind, unpretentious sort of smile. It made her feel a twinge of guilt for mistreating him so. She handed over the glasses, as per their agreement. He cleaned them carefully with his shirt and put them back on.

“You wanna help me finish it?” She offered. “I was trying to make, like, a hideout or something.” She shrugged self-consciously, awaiting his response. She was already prepared to laugh it off in the event that he’d expressed his disinterest or ridiculed her for doing something so silly.

“Ya, okay,” he nodded without hesitation. He seemed completely unaffected by the childishness of this project. Mary wondered if he was even aware that likely no one else their age would find any interest in such things. Maybe his being so foreign and dorky was good in a way. Since he wasn’t aware of what was expected of young American teenagers, he was less inclined to judge her for being abnormally immature.

After quietly digging beside her for a while, Heinrich got up and started to walk away.

“Where’re you goin’?” Mary inquired.

“I’m gonna get some tings to make da roof,” he called back casually. He soon returned with a collection of sticks, boards, and other debris.

Together, they gingerly propped the array of items Heinrich had gathered against the driftwood, leaving a space through which someone could climb in and out of the fort.

The entire time, Mary was intensely aware that regardless of his apparent gawkiness and presumed innocence, Heinrich was still, in fact, a boy. She didn’t find him physically attractive, and she refused to consciously acknowledge that he wasn’t completely hideous looking, but that didn’t stop her teenaged hormones from causing her to feel odd being so close to him for such a long period of time. She kept having to avert her mind from involuntarily conjuring up naughty thoughts and images relating to him. She suddenly felt compelled to reach over and punch him in the arm or slap the back of his head – she wanted to touch him, but not in a friendly way.

Just then, he spoke, jarring her from her thoughts. “Go in it,” he urged softly, motioning at the entrance to their new hideout.

“You go first,” she retorted, moving to the side a bit to give him access.

He eyed her suspiciously. “Vy, vat you gonna do?”

“ _Nothing!_ Just get your ass in there, weirdo!” She reached out and pushed him. His shoulder felt warm and solid under the damp, sandy fabric of his t-shirt.

“Hey,” he muttered, eyeing her with squinty mock indignation until she couldn’t maintain her deadpan expression any longer and snickered. He shot her a sly half-smile before turning back to try to crawl into the fort.

Somehow he managed to cram his lanky body into the small space. He scrunched up to one side and motioned for Mary to join him.

“I’m not gonna fit,” she insisted, “You have to get out first.”

“No, you can go in – look,” he pointed at the tiny area of emptiness he had created for her.

“Hell no, I don’t wanna be all up on your smelly ass.”

Heinrich suddenly glanced back and forth urgently. “Come on, da bad guys is coming, dey vill take you avay!” He exclaimed in a theatrically distraught tone.

“Who’re the bad guys? The Russians?” Mary half-heartedly played along, calling on her very limited knowledge of world affairs.

Heinrich giggled as if she was making a joke.

Mary shrugged. “Well I dunno, who _should_ it be? I mean, the Russians are like commies and stuff, right? Don’t they have nuclear bombs or some shit?”

Heinrich shrugged too and then abruptly returned to pretending he was very distressed again. “Ya, is da Russians, come! Dey gonna blow us up!”

Mary briefly pondered the idea of bursting into derisive laughter at the ridiculousness of the scenario before her, but she quickly reconsidered – she had an idea, a potential use for Heinrich in a larger scheme she was just beginning to formulate. Besides, who else would be shameless enough to actually play pretend with her like this? She figured she might as well enjoy it while she could.

“Oh God,” she cried, hastily cramming herself into the fort alongside Heinrich.

“Are you okay?” He asked breathlessly, grabbing her upper arm.

“Yeah, I barely made it! They were right on my tail!”

Heinrich whipped his head around to stare intently at the opening. “Shh. Dey comin’ right now. I can see da feets,” he reported grimly. He glanced around as if he could actually see people marching past.

Mary wondered if maybe other boys tended to do things like this amongst themselves when no girls were around to see it. Maybe even Kristian Schaefer still played war games with his friends outside of school. She secretly hoped so. It would make her feel much less eccentric. Either way, she still liked the idea of being able to get a glimpse into the mind of a boy this way.

“Do you think it’s safe?” Mary whispered after a brief pause.

“I gonna check,” Heinrich whispered back, holding up one finger.

He poked his head out of the entrance, eyes darting about in mock-paranoia behind his salt-smudged glasses.

In profile, his upper lip stuck out quite a bit further than his lower lip, adding to his babyish appearance. He was pitiful. Mary wondered what he might look like as an adult. She couldn’t imagine anyone ever taking him seriously.

“All clear,” he announced confidently after scanning the deserted beach. He crept out of the fort and turned around, offering Mary a sand-caked hand. She allowed him to pull her up. 

Suddenly, he pointed past her shoulder and shouted, “Ach, dey seen us! Run!” He turned around and started sprinting away before suddenly clutching his chest and sprawling onto the sand.

Mary ran up and knelt over him. “Oh no, what happened?”

“Ughhh, dey got me… Ohh…” He closed his eyes and writhed about dramatically.

Mary couldn’t contain her laughter any longer. She burst out snickering uncontrollably.

Heinrich opened his eyes and gazed up at her for a second or two before dissolving into sheepish laughter himself.

“Dude, you’re fucking hilarious,” Mary giggled.

“I’m _dyin’!_ You not supposed to _laugh!”_

“Sorry. It was too classic. I couldn’t help it.”

“Let’s play sometin’ else,” Heinrich suggested, still lying in the sand, looking up at her.

 

 


End file.
